


Nessun Dorma

by ZaliaChimera



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Angst, Catholic, Character Death, Confessional, Disfigurement, Euthanasia, F/M, Religious Discussion, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 18:43:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1658564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘The rest is silence’. Sometimes that is the only absolution that Janine can offer. Spoilers for S3M10 and S2M39.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nessun Dorma

“Hello Simon.”

The huddled figure perched on the edge of the hospital bed looks up, his face still obscured by that mask, the swathe of cloth and the hood covering everything except his eyes. Those widen in surprise. “Jenny.”

His voice is hoarse and rusty from disuse and lets out a horrible rasping laugh. “They're making you do it then?”

“I asked,” Janine says coolly. She heads over to the table to set down the syringes and the little vials that Doctor Myers had given her.

He lets out a sound that might be a sob, or might be a laugh or who knows, maybe it's just a quirk of his breathing now. “Right. Wanted to get your revenge, eh Jenny? Make it personal. Make sure no-one can associate you with the traitor of Abel?”

She turns, shooting him a flat, harsh look. She takes a breath, trying to force herself to relax, to ease the way her shoulders have hunched. “If that is what you think then-” 

“You're impossible,” she hisses, and turns back to the equipment.

Simon laughs again, giggles with a hysterical edge that make her skin crawl. “Damn sight more impossible now though, right Jenny? Not many people get eaten by zoms and come out the other side. Not- not many can cut every vein and still be walking 'round.”

His voice cracks at the end, the giggles turning to muffles noises that sound like sobs, and she won't beak. She won't. Not over him.

She busies herself with mundanity instead, washing her hands thoroughly and pulling on a pair of gloves. When she turns back, his head is bowed, his knees drawn up to his chest. He looks very much like a child, a scared little boy. It hurts to see. Simon had never been shy about taking up space, making himself heard and seen. She's never before seen him look small.

“This drug should, temporarily at least, counteract the effects of whatever treatments Van Ark gave you. It worked on cultures of your cells in the lab. They were able to be killed.”

The look that he gives her is painfully hopeful, the flash that she can see of his expression behind the mask that he wears. “And then a quick bullet to the head right?” he says and she could take it much more easily if the mocking tone didn't sound so false.

“Drugs.” 

“Wow, wasting supplies on me Jenny? What's got into you? I'm not worth that.”

“It was decided that given your present... condition, that this would be for the best.”

With how much pain he'd suffered... no, no, she didn't want to think about that.

“Right, and they made you go along with it,” he says bitterly, and it's too much, too much to bear.

She sets the syringe down carefully, because even now, some things are too precious to waste on anger. She won't let him do this to her.

“Do you really think so little of me, Si?” The nickname is a twist of the knife, and it gets his attention alright, a wild-eyed look. Good to know she can hurt him, even now.

“What?”

Her fingers curl into fists at her sides, the prick of her nails against her palms the only thing that stops her from lashing out. That would just play into whatever game is going on in his wretched mind.

“Do you really think me so- co _cold_ that I feel nothing?” she asks, meeting his shaded eyes squarely. “That all of this that all you did to us, didn't mean anything to me except an inconvenience? Because is that is the case, Simon, tell me now and I will gladly fetch someone else to finish the job.”

She hates the way that her voice cracks at the end.

Simon doesn't reply.

There's a lump in her throat, heat pricking at her eyes. She turns and heads for the door.

“Jenny.” His voice is barely audible. “Please don't leave me.”

Her chest squeezes painfully and she drags in a harsh breath, her shoulders taut. Her composure is shot, she knows it, but it doesn't mean she can't try. She can always try.

“Hold out your arm,” she says brusquely, looking anywhere but at his face. The syringe feels too heavy in her hand when she picks it up and she has to remind herself not to squeeze it so tightly.

His arm is pale and horribly scarred; bite marks and pitted hollows where chunks of flesh have been torn out. She touches one mark lightly, a long line along the inside of his arm, wrist to elbow, that is too precise to be the work of any zombie. It isn't bleeding, but it isn't healed either, raw and red and awful.

“I just wanted it to stop,” Simon says.

“Simon...”

He tilts his head, the hood falling back to reveal familiar dark curls as he looks up at her. “I got what I wanted and I lost everything and now all I want is the opposite. But it didn't _work_ Jenny. It didn't work. Do you think suicide is a sin if you can't die?”

She pauses, the needle hovering at the crook of his elbow. “I don't know,” she says honestly. “I don't believe in god, or in sin or any eternal judgement, although I don't think you can be blamed for wishing to escape this fate.”

“What do you believe in?”

The needle slides into his arm and she focusses on that for a moment instead of his question, injecting the liquid slowly. “I believe in doing my duty and doing the best by the people who rely upon me,” she says. “I believe in doing what you can in your short life because in the end, that's all that you have.”

She sets the timer. Ten minutes Doctor Myers had said. Ten minutes for it to work.

“I can't imagine there being just... just _nothing_ , Jenny. It makes it all seem futile, doesn't it?”

“I find it rather comforting actually,” Janine replies, a small smile curing her lips. He looks at her as though she has gone utterly mad. “No higher power judging you for your petty mistakes and failings. No-one to hold you to account except your equals. In the long run, humanity is insignificant and amazing.”

“And here I thought I'd at least be remembered for making big mistakes,” Simon replies. He laughs, ragged but genuine before he lapses once more into silence. She can feel his eyes on her as she prepares the morphine.

“You can ask, y'know, Jenny. I know you're dying to ask. People already have though. Died I mean.” He giggles again. He thinks it's funny. Of course he does. He had always taken perverse pleasure in the most morbid of humour and she just-

“Stop it, Simon!” she snaps and he silences at once, staring at her like he's been slapped. “Stop laughing. Stop pretending. For once in your life, stop _lying_.”

She thinks he might cry. She worries that _she_ might, the frustration bleeding through where she'd tried to be so controlled.

She folds her arms over her chest defensively. “Just- just stop,” she says, her voice harsh and strained. “It's not a game, Simon. It's not a joke. No-one is laughing except you. And I don't even believe that is real.”

She looks at him a moment longer before turning around with a muttered curse to grip the edge of the table her knuckles turning white. She shouldn't have come. She should have got someone else to do it, someone who wasn't emotionally involved. Why had she ever let this go on for so long?

“Jenny,” he says, a pleading note entering his voice. She should tell him to stop. She isn't his jenny and he lost the right to call her that when he agreed to become Van Ark's pawn.

She'll never hear it again in a few minutes.

He takes her silence as assent.

“If I stop lying,” he says quietly, “then there's nothing left, Jenny. Just rot and _sin_.” he spits the word. “There was _never_ anything else.”

She stiffens and turns quickly to level a vicious glare at him. Fury pinches her face, fills every line of her. “Well, I'm glad to know what a low opinion you have of me. Take your chemical, take your sin, and get out of my town.”

“What? No, Jenny, no I-” He's startled, a stricken look on his face.

“You must think me very stupid,” she says, each word clipped and cold, “to fall for a lie like this. To look at a monster and see someone worth-” The word sticks but what's the point in hiding now? “Worth loving.”

There's silence, a long moment of it as he stares at her, and it draws out between them, tense and taut and horrible.

A noise of pure hurt escapes him, twisting into strangled sobs. He draws his knees up again, hiding his face, that mask against them. It doesn't do much to stifle the sound of him crying. The sobs shake his body. He looks very thin, all bone and sinew, so little left of the strong man that she had known.

And she is not so cold as people think, to leave him there. She rests her hand on his shoulder, squeezes it, and slides her fingers down his arm to his hand. The one that remains at least is unchanged, long fingers, calloused and warm, and they curl against hers, twining with them. She lets him.

“Jenny, I-” He gulps back a hiccuping sob. “You were- you _are_ the best thing I ever had in my life. Better than I ever deserved. I love you.” He looks surprised by the admission, as though he'd been expecting fire and brimstone to rain down upon him for saying it.

Janine half expects that as well; perhaps that's the burning ache in her chest. “Simon...”

“It's true!” he says earnestly. “I love you. I lov-”

The timer goes off, sharp and discordant. Janine stares at it. “No.”

No, it isn't enough. It's not enough _time_.

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls,” Simon says, his voice thick. “Had to catch up with me eventually, right?”

“Are you certain?” Janine says, mustering as much calm as she is able.

He nods, and she wishes she could see his expression behind the mask. She can't see anything when his eyes are averted. “Don't leave me like this, Jenny. Some things are worse than death.”

“I understand.”

She isn't sure what Doctor Myers has given her, but she'd been assured that it would be painless and quick. A sedative she thinks. She hadn't paid as much attention to it as she should have. She fills the syringe as slowly as she can, and Simon watches her the entire time.

“It's ready.” 

She sits next to him on the bed and in an impulsive moment, reaches out to where she can see the binding that keeps the mask in place.

“Don't.” Simon catches her wrist. “You don't want to see. It's pretty horrible and I- you should remember as I was. Hot,” he adds with a chuckle that almost sounds normal.

Janine smiles, strained but true, and leans in closer. “The man you want me to remember betrayed me, betrayed everything we worked for out of his own fear and selfishness.”

He flinches, but he doesn't pull away, just bows his head, shoulders hunching. “The man I _want_ to remember,” she continues, touching lightly the sliver of skin at the edge of the mask, “he's the one who came back despite that. Who helped us. A man a little wiser, a little braver and more honest than the one who left.” She licks her lips, looking away. Braces herself. “The one I love.”

He's trembling. She can feel it where he holds her, where he's pressed against her side. Slowly he releases her wrist.

He's stock still when she reaches for the mask again. Her hands find the leather cord holding it in place and unfasten it, untangling the ties from his matted hair. She pulls the mask away.

It is awful. There's no denying that, no amount of love and regret can soften that. He's heavily scarred where skin has grown back at all, and the skin is pitted and hollowed in places where flesh is just gone. High up on his jaw is a spot where the flesh is raw and she thinks she sees a flash of white bone exposed to the air. His nose, always crooked from some old sports injury, is half gone and the thought of how that could have happened makes her feel sick.

She's seen worse, but only on the dead.

“Not so hot now, am I?” he asks, and the skin around his mouth twists as he smiles.

His eyes though, his eyes are the same. More tired, lonelier, but still as warm as the first time that they'd kissed. She'd fallen in love with those eyes, let them draw her out of her shell to accept his advances. She cups his cheek, her thumb stroking against his skin, and he startles, so surprised that anyone would touch him now when he had always thrived on physical closeness.

The reaction is stronger when she kisses him; he recoils, a gesture wholly alien. But slowly he relaxes into the chaste gesture, and he clings to her even when they part.

“I'm scared Jenny.”

He sounds so vulnerable, so young.

“I know,” she says. “I know.”

“I'm going to hell, Jenny. I'm a monster.”

She strokes her hand down the side of his face. “You came back, Simon. You made the decision to try to make up for your actions. Even I know that that is valued by God.”

“Not his forgiveness I care about. Not really. Always thought confession was stupid. He'd know I was rotten to the core anyway. Who'd forgive that? It's too late now anyway.”

“Oh Simon,” Janine says softly. She holds his face between her hands and kisses his forehead before resting them together, her eyes closed. She can be angry and bitter later, she has a lifetime for that. She has only one moment for this. “I forgive you, Simon. I forgive you, and I love you.”

Simon sucks in a harsh breath and his smile is something close to an adoration that she has never deserved. Not when the only absolution that she can offer is a swift death.

“I'm ready,” he says. “Ready as I'll ever be.”

She pulls away, letting the moment linger as long as she can before she picks up the syringe again. Simon takes a deep breath and holds out his arm again. He doesn't even wince when she administers the injection.

It takes a second and that's it. All over.

He's over.

“How long?”

She shakes her head, her breath catching in her throat. “I don't know. Doctor Myers didn't say. Quickly, I think.”

He chews on his lips for a moment and then raises her hand to his lips to kiss the back of it lightly. “I love you Jenny.”

Her eyes are stinging as she helps him to lie down, his head resting in her lap. “I love you too Si. Simon. My Simon.”

He smiles and for that moment it is as brilliant as any that she has seen from him, full of warmth and love. His lips move and she leans closer so that she can hear the soft words.

“Forgive me father, for I have sinned. You- you know how long it's been since my last confession. I- I never- I've done some bad stuff. I've hurt people...”

Janine doesn't interrupt him. All she can do is stroke his hair and bear witness as his words slur and fade and his body starts to go limp. And then there's a moment when his chest just doesn't rise again.

A strangled noise escapes her. It's hard to breathe, her chest tight like it could crush her. She touches his face gently, brushes his hair back. She can't look away. 

For the first time since she's known him, he looks at peace.


End file.
